The hotel rates in NYC in May are outrageous! Do you know any websites that may discount, or has anyone used Priceline or Hotwire and found success for under $200.
How about a B & B?

Supply & demand ... NYC has a tremendous supply, but it is outpaced by demand.

Try priceline, midtown east.

Good luck!

Oh, and do a search of this forum for dozens if not hundreds of long discussions of NYC hotels. You'll find tons of info if you search.

Look at places like quikbook.com and hotels.com and find a hotel at a rate/location you can tolerate, make sure you can cancel without penalty and book it. You need a back up plan in case you don’t win something on Priceline. Then to go www.betterbidding.com and www.biddingfortravel.com and learn as much as you can about bidding for hotels in NYC. This is important because just because you bid 4 star midtown east (or west) doesn't mean you will get something and you want to know how to re-bid smartly so you don't waste money or a bid.

We just had a fantastic stay at the Grand Hyatt for $110 thanks to Priceline, but hotel inventory for May will be much different than in January!

For May you will definitely have to use some sort of discounter to get something pleasant under $200. Agree to use the transparent discounters to tyr to find something cancellable now - then use Priceline to try for something better.

Bid carefully - nothing undre 4* - since some "3*" aren't at all - and not pleasant. You can try bidding Central Park South, and midtown east and west. Note: this will work only for 2 people wiling to share a bed. In NYC many hotel rooms have only 1 double bed or two twins - and you can;t have more than 2 people - and in any case Priceline rooms are priced only for 2 people.

Just checked applecore group of budget hotels for random dates in May and all are showing prices of $225 plus taxes ( or around $260) per night minimum up to over $300 - for 2 people.

Suggest you move quickly to make reservations given what prices are looking like.

You also might want to have a back up reservation with Super 8. I stay here several times/year. Great location, keep checking rates, it's easy to cancel and rebook. I did this three times on my stay between Christmas and New Years. Price ended up dropping twice for $100/night. Final rate $151/night.

Travelzoo.com is another place that has discounts/specials but usually only 1-3 months away from the stay. Priceline is best for shorter stays. If you're coming for a week or longer, don't count on a Priceline win unless you're prepared to split your stay.

There are quite a few b & bs that have prices around $200/night but they tend to be less easy to cancel if you want to try PL or wait for specials.

1871house.com
wymanhouse.com
west-eleventh.com
abingdonguesthouse.com

are some of the nicer ones.

A new wesbsite I've recently learned of is sidestep.com. It searches multiple travel sites for fares, room quotes, and packages.